I think it's a question of where your horizons are set. when I was in the 300's my ideas about happiness were a lot more circumscribed than they are now. Much like the people in Plato's cave, watching shadows on the wall and thinking the shadows were real. If I recall correctly, the watchers were chained to the cave wall either literally or figuratively - which I feel is my/our preconceptions of how life is and how it should be. One person breaks those chains and gets out of the cave into the light of the real world, and returns to tell the others what he's seen. Sadly the other cave dwellers don't want to hear this and end up killing the guy, so as to preserve their notion of the way things are and ought to be. Why be content with shadows?
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